A decade or so from now, when the grey hairs have finally given way to white, motorists are going to get stuck behind me in traffic, and shake their head when they are finally able to pass, muttering fucking old people to whomever else happens to be in the car. Everyone present in that vehicle will agree it’s a terrible affliction. These people would have no way of knowing that I have always driven that way.
Charges of this sort will not be levied upon Faraday anytime soon, however. As we move across Houck in a northwesterly direction, less direct than the straight line marking our entrance, it’s clear that the typical small town barrage of stop signs and red lights are grating upon his already frayed nerves. That and the emergence of this battered crimson pickup, its shade quite similar to those other twin objects of his derision, a vehicle divebombing in front of us but then subsequently puttering at a maddening clip. The professor is cursing and muttering, interweaving broadsides against this driver with the primary thread of our conversation – or should I say his monologue – which would be a rant about his ex-wife.
“So, yeah, I mean, I certainly have my jackass tendencies, drunken jackass tendencies, and she’s…oh for the love of Jesus Harold, would it kill this turd to find the gas pedal?…but ah, and she’s kind of a bitch, okay, but we knew that going in. We already had these bullet points down pat. So why is this a problem? That was my thing. What’s the issue here? But yeah so anyway,” he concludes in descending notes, leading into a sigh, then the metaphorical brake slam of another outburst, “fuck! I’m gonna lose it if this nimrod doesn’t get his ass in gear!”
As a hedge against his anxiety leaching onto me, I mostly focus on the scenery. Whatever section of Houck this is, the residents are obviously clearing a higher salary than their crosstown counterparts. At present we’re moving through a long, gracefully curving avenue with a double yellow line down the center, surrounded on both sides by correspondingly stretched out single story houses, separated from the road by gigantic front yards and, more often than not, knee high stone parapets. Even the grass is fuller and richer here, though we are barely into the season where anything is supposed to grow.
“Anyway, I suppose I should have known – I mean, how could you not? – considering I was her fourth and she’s already onto a fifth. Or so I hear. Then again she was my third so I guess you never know,” the professor allows, with a chuckle that might have displayed warmth, instead hangs lifeless in the air, drained of blood, an open cut waving in this convertible’s whipping wind. His left palm smacking the steering wheel abruptly shifts my focus from this phenomenon, however, as I glance up to observe taillights engaged, a speed limit dropping from 35 to 25.
“Are you kidding me?” he asks, railing against an indifferent universe as much as anything else. In a manner consistent with someone making a hard right at the next intersection, without a pump of the brakes or flick of the turn signal, he spins his head in my direction, wild eyed but lucid, and asks, “what about you? You said you were divorced? How many times we talking?”
“Just the once,” I nod, sunk deep within this leather seat, arms crossed. But then the professor continues to whip his head from me to the road to me and back again, as though offended by my reticence, so I elaborate. “Well, uh, yeah…so we were together about eleven years, Rebecca and me. And we’ve been split up for…well, about eleven years,” I recall, and then a tidy, unexpected laugh escapes my throat. “The whole thing still seems pretty strange to me, actually.”
“Oh yeah? How so?”
“I don’t know. That my life was actually, like, conjoined with this other person’s for that long. Or that it’s been over for that long already. Although really,” I sigh and rub my chin with one hand, “I guess what I really mean is it’s still kind of shocking, in a way, that any of this happened at all. From the standpoint of…”
“She was pretty hot?” Faraday questions, with a slight uptick of lip, sarcastic, perhaps, underneath his mustache.
“No…well, yeah, I think so, but that’s not what I was going to say. I was going to say it’s still really bizarre sometimes that I…that it…well, as years have gone by I’ve actually been able to venture out in public and not feel like a total backwards dork. Which,” I laugh more heartily now, between nerves and bemused remembrance, “believe me, is really quite an amazing development. The thought never even occurs to me these days. Not that I’ve gotten any more adept or whatever. I just think you figure out ways around certain situations, you learn how to function.”
Gesturing wildly with my hands, I’m aware that this surely is a sign of nerves, yet am not troubled by this revelation. Any reaction I might have expected from Faraday is completely wiped out anyway by occurrences on the road before us. Along an S shaped curve, we’ve just passed a school and some sort of medical park, during which time the speed limit remains 25, followed by a straightaway that fails to develop much steam, mostly as a result of a train track bracketed on both sides by four way stops where our main thoroughfare encounters deserted side streets. In each instance, the red pickup truck ahead is slow to arrive at a complete stop, despite not moving all that swiftly to begin with, and even more sluggish in mobilizing again. Followed by his insistence upon an abnormally cautious speed once fully moving. Now we’ve reached a T intersection that finds him flicking on his right handed blinker, apparently the same direction we are headed, awaiting the turn of a light to green in the face of strong cross traffic. Professor Faraday erupts.
“I can’t take this anymore,” he declares, and pops out of his seat before I even process the comment, flings his door open and stomps up the road.
“Hey what’s the fuckin deal, buddy? Is there some compelling reason you’re creeeeeping up the road?” I can hear him jawing at the guy, in his face at the driver’s side window.
“Could be. What business is it yours?”
“My business is that I’m the guy stuck behind your ass!” Faraday says, red around the gills as he flaps an angry hand in the direction of this Infiniti.
“Look man, the sign says 25, I’m doin 25.”
To this, Faraday screws his features up as though considering this the craziest theory he’s ever heard, and spits out, “who gives a shit? There aren’t any cops around! Do you see any cops around?” And now he’s spun in the other direction, flapping the opposite hand at the traffic passing before us.
“What if there is? What, like you’re gonna pay my speeding ticket?” the dude retorts, in a slow murmur, a barely discernible backwoods drawl.
By now, the light has turned green, and there’s even somebody behind us. Neither of these two combatants observe this fact, however, most likely because Faraday is now reaching into his right front pocket, features displaying impatient resignation as he whips out a thick leather wallet. Yanks out a wad of bills, then with the other thumb begins flicking them off the top of the stack, into the window and presumably this guy’s lap.
“There! Now! Drive!” he commands. As if Faraday requires further impetus, the navy Cadillac behind us begins honking, although by this point the professor has already begun his determined stomp back to our vehicle. The pickup, meanwhile, lurches forward maybe two inches, tops, before realizing the light has gone red again already, as his brake lights spring once more to life. Me, I’m thinking that unless, say, driving to Seattle or thereabouts, this little stunt has cost Faraday more time than it’s gained.
He’s either panting or fuming, I can’t tell which – likely both – but neither of us says a word until we have the go signal again, and all three vehicles involved in this miniature drama make a right hand turn. In a near instant rebuke of the notion that he’d been swayed the least by this Random Act Of Angry Benevolence, our truck driving friend pulls over to the side, shakes his head slowly with stunned disbelief as we pass. Less than a block later, the professor makes another quick left, and we are soon leaving Houck altogether.
“Yeah, so anyway,” he says at last, reconnecting with a thought introduced three subjects ago, “she basically hated everything about the fuckin house once we actually got underway. Hated the paint job, hated the layout, hated the location, hated my face, pretty much. Liked the neighbors, though – or well, I guess I should say she tolerated the neighbors, but only because they would listen to her vent about me all goddamn day. Or so I started to hear from everyone.”
“What did she do? How did you meet?” I ask, but probably could have guessed the answer, with the only other feasible possibility being someone he met in a bar.
“From the university,” he nods, as if reading my mind, “and everything was peachy for about the first year or two. Even after that, we would fight a little bit, you know, but nothing too outrageous. Then we moved into this house while it was being built – actually you could say it’s still being built, I guess, but that’s neither here nor – and yeah, so everything went to shit. My first clue was I started to notice she was scheduling her classes as much as possible directly opposite mine. Like most normal humans, you know, I was taking Fridays off, and then what do you know, all of the sudden she’s mysteriously wanting to work Fridays. That kind of shit.”
“Hmm,” I offer, sympathetically as possible, then ask, “is she still at Greenlee?”
At this, Faraday’s head whips in my direction and he says, “no, Christ no! Are you crazy? I would blow my fuckin brains out,” as though he’s either painted such a vivid picture or else I already knew the women and should have recognized this as a preposterous notion.
The road to Chester’s place unfurls before us in a manner that is fortunately more direct and less mind numbing than…wherever it was we’d visited earlier, our morning encounter with the lake. Shortly upon leaving Houck, we encounter an admittedly impressive truss arch type bridge, cutting a northwest bound diagonal, a few hundred feet above what is either a river or an inlet of the mighty lake. Sail, fishing, and ski boats are visible fulfilling their destinies at various points on the water, and for the first time I am actively pondering what it might be like to join them, longing to take someone up on their offer of a nautical ride.
Now on the opposite shore, as we’ve traced a barely perceptible climb, both sides of the road lord over us in massive, rounded hills, the convertible slicing between them in a continued upward motion. Then, over a slight crest that finds us losing sight of the glinting waves below, a side road appears on our left, a secluded neighborhood of sorts into which Faraday now whips the car. There’s an abandoned former guard station, peeling in yellow strips of paint with white trim, in the center of this divided road sans any discernible gate on either side. So they long ago abandoned this pretext of elitism, by appearances, and yet otherwise the houses we are passing betray a proud middle class status, bordering on high here and there. Older, populated mostly by a silver haired brigade who’d planted their roots decades ago, but by no means representing any real estate bargains at present.
Or so it would seem at first glance, anyway. In reality, upon closer inspections, hillbilly enclaves persist here and there, homesteads junked up slightly by muscle cars on blocks, halfway finished landscaping overhauls, and other weird projects. And our destination, it should come as no surprise, claims at least a couple such features, with a driveway that’s only freshly asphalted about halfway in, the remainder a heavily rutted, spotty gravel which some owner at some point must have thought a good idea, if not Chester himself. This transition occurs roughly where the drive first passes their house – a modest but well-kept brick split level, by appearances – which is also where we glimpse the pair of figures Faraday has been hunting, I surmise, standing by the wreck of some 1970s bomb, a rust colored yacht of the highway variety.
Make that standing inside the auto, actually, for one of these characters. With the hood up and tools in hand, the taller, dark haired kid has his back to us, but his cohort, wearing a befuddled expression in addition to this purple mesh trucker hat with a yellow cursive H on its face, perched comically high atop his brown shag cut, occupies a hole where some piece of the engine should be. We are almost upon them before the other registers our approach, and though his raven black hair peels away in a widow’s peak, and his appearance is further tilted older by heavy baggage beneath the eyes, a drunkard’s beard stubble, it’s obvious both of these lads are in their mid-twenties at most. I wonder if this has anything to do with why the professor, who clearly isn’t allergic to confrontation, drove over here hellbent on chewing out some ass, but has thawed out some before a word is said.
“You racing tonight?” he asks the hat wearing one, he of halfway formed goatee framing a wide open, dumbfounded mouth. And it occurs to me that Faraday has already adopted their cadences, too, whoever this duo might be, speaking with more conversational politeness than I’ve heard him – whether by design or subconscious influence.
“Naw, that’s Thursday,” this figure replies.
“Hmm,” Faraday says, then nods toward the vehicle’s dissected brain and asks, “what’s the deal here? Why you got this thing torn apart?”
“Well, you know how it is. We like soupin up these engines, hotdoggin around town.”
“And now it’s fucked up?” Faraday theorizes. When the hat wearing hombre slowly nods, the professor continues, asking, “why’s it fucked up?”
“Because we like souping up engines. And hotdogging around town.” The tall, beard stubbled sidekick intends this as a dry joke, though smirking like someone with knowledge he couldn’t possibly lower himself to share. I already don’t like this guy.
Only the insertion of a slight awkward pause induces Faraday to consider handing out names – although I was perfectly fine without them, it must be said – as he turns to me, to lure my gaze into following his wordless bidding. “Cleveland Shane,” he explains, tipping his head in the direction of the fellow still standing under the popped open hood, and then the latter still only introduced as “Patterson.”
“Yep, yep, so…I’m racin Friday. Derby’s on Thursday,” the notorious Cleveland Shane adds, following another lengthy silence.
“So anyway,” Faraday cuts him off at last, an abrupt but expected introduction of this visit’s purpose, “about this damn boat.”
“Yeah…,” Patterson starts, stares off into the near distance beyond our shoulders while also conjuring up the textbook bad-news-bringer’s grimace, “we tried filling it in with a resin, but that didn’t take.”
Faraday screws up the left half of his face in disbelief, and spews out, “a resin? When was this?” in a fitful manner that suggests he might start shaking with uncontrollable rage any second.
“Yyyyyy…yesterday?” Patterson starts, looks back at Cleveland Shane, who nods. Then, to Faraday once more, direct and affirmative, “yeah, yesterday.”
“Okay, but where’s the boat at now? I was down at your house earlier and didn’t see it. Or should I say, I was at the place from which you are renting a room.”
“It’s not there.”
“So it’s here?”
“It’s not here, either.”
“Well where is it then? It’s been three fucking weeks!”
“It’s, uh…down at Fidget’s right now,” Patterson states, peering over his shoulder again at his suddenly stoic accomplice.
“Fidget’s?” Faraday bellows, his features as contorted as it would seem possible for a human while still managing to make eye contact with his combatant. Then, only slightly more subdued, in forced, measured tones, he states, “look, it’s been three weeks. Now I’m not saying I wanna go small claims or anything…”
“You wanna go small claims?” Patterson laughs, and throws both hands in the air, “go small claims!”
“I’m not saying I wanna go small claims,” Faraday seethes, and it’s really saying something to observe that he is the calmer of the two. He pauses, breathes through his nose in violent fashion a couple of times, then raises an index finger and declares, “tomorrow. I will be at your…I will be at the house from which you are renting a room tomorrow. Got it? And you’d better have the boat ready!”
With this, he begins marching back toward the Infiniti, though it takes me a moment to even register this latest development. Patterson sends a smirk my way, and after watching Cleveland watch Faraday watch Patterson smirk at me, before meeting my gaze with his patent protected, smug yet stupefied expression, the signal finally reaches my brain and I shuffle off in the direction of the convertible.
We are out of the neighborhood and turning right on the main highway again before either of us speaks, and it’s Faraday of course who breaks the silence. “Well, that went well, I would say, all things considered,” he summarizes, genuine as far as I can tell.
“How much did you pay that guy?” I wonder.
“Eh, only a bottle of some really high end vodka, but still,” he shrugs, with both hands on the wheel.
Want to read more? Find out what happens next by picking up the ebook and the paperback!
